But an actual house it is. Although at the moment the kitchen ceiling is leaking.

Thank goodness, Dad is here to fix it.

But we are getting ahead of our tale.

One’s first impression upon seeing the red paper clip house is that Kyle MacDonald should have started out with a stapler — he might have done better. It’s a small white boxy house with just a spit of front yard. It is situated at 503 Main Street, and it is not hard to find. It’s the house with the large red paper clip on the lawn.

Inside, on the July day when the town was mounting a challenge to capture the title for the world’s largest red paper clip (not the one in the yard; a bigger one on the village green), the mood was festive.

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Mr. MacDonald and Dominique Dupuis, who were married at the end of July, had painted the rooms bright colors (O.K., their friends had done a lot of that) and knocked out a wall between the kitchen and the living room (O.K., his father had done that).

Mr. MacDonald’s parents, Ian, an inventor and manufacturer, and Colleen, and his brother, Scott, were visiting.

The Red Paper Clip guy is an exuberant sort. When photographers arrive for the paper clip challenge later in the day, it will not be a surprise to see him leap into the air, repeatedly and unasked, as if this is what one is supposed to do for photographers.

Mr. MacDonald says he and Ms. Dupuis do not spend a lot of money. He has had the same backpack since ninth grade. Almost all of their furniture was given to them by townspeople when they moved in a year ago.

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The L-shape living room sofa was built by Ian MacDonald from old kitchen cabinet doors. Upstairs, where the couple is redoing the bathroom floor, the toilet is in the hall.

Kyle MacDonald, it turns out, is not an entirely observant slacker. After growing up near Vancouver, he helped put himself through the University of British Columbia by working on oil rigs and planting trees. But he did want a job that would be fun.

He met Ms. Dupuis in 2002, and lived with her in Montreal’s hip Le Plateau neighborhood. The rent was $600 a month for a 500-square-foot apartment. Mr. MacDonald tried his hand at travel writing and occasionally worked for his father. Ms. Dupuis worked part time as a dietician while taking college classes. She also paid the rent.

Did she ever consider throwing the slacker out? No, she says; she knew Mr. MacDonald wanted to find something creative.

“I think I would have thrown myself out,” Mr. MacDonald says.

Suddenly, a leak springs from the ceiling, underneath the bathroom.

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Mr. MacDonald’s father and brother go off to fix the plumbing. Mr. MacDonald returns to the story: getting the idea of swapping a house for a paper clip; feeling discouraged and doing nothing until his father urged him on; posting a photo of the red paper clip and the offer to swap on Craigslist on July 12, 2005.

The first trades (from paper clip to fish pen to handmade ceramic doorknob to camp stove to 1,000-watt generator) brought Mr. MacDonald’s Web site 20 to 30 hits a day. Then he wrote a note to the Web site boingboing.net. The day it was posted Mr. MacDonald’s site had over 100,000 hits. Eight months later, after he had swapped an afternoon in a recording studio for a year’s rent in a Phoenix condo, members of the news media were calling him hourly.

His last trade item, a speaking role in a movie produced by Corbin Bernsen (offered by Mr. Bernsen for a Kiss snow globe), led to the offer of the house in Kipling.

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Mr. MacDonald and Ms. Dupuis accepted the keys in a ceremony in Kipling on July 12, 2006. Guests included many of those who had made trades. It was also the day Mr. MacDonald borrowed the red paper clip that started it all from Corinna Haight, twisted it into a ring, and proposed to Ms. Dupuis. She wore it through the day, then returned it to the owner.

Very romantic. But it is hard to imagine this backpacking, globe-trotting couple making a life in a town of fewer than 1,000 people. How much time have they spent here?

Three months, Mr. MacDonald says. They spent the winter in Asia and there was a lot of traveling to Los Angeles for a film deal. And yes, they have an apartment in Montreal.

It seems a good time to tell Mr. MacDonald about Max Rosey, a New York publicist who received front-page newspaper coverage in the 1960s by having a showgirl sit on an ostrich egg in an attempt to hatch it. So how long did she end up sitting on the egg? the publicist was asked years later. Until the photographers left, he said.

“I totally get what you’re saying,” Mr. MacDonald says. “I’m not going to sit on the egg to prove I live here. We are here.”

There have been news reports that his house is worth $45,000 to $50,000. “I don’t want to talk about the money, the market value,” Mr. MacDonald says. “The point was working together, meeting people.”

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It’s time to go to the park, for the unveiling of the big red paper clip. It’s also an opportunity to buttonhole Kipling’s young mayor, Kevin Hassler, and ask him how much this burg shelled out for the house.

Mr. MacDonald really does not want him to talk about that, Mr. Hassler says.

The Dragon From the East blows but the mildest breath of fire and smoke. “About $8,000,” the mayor says.

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The unveiling of a 15-foot red paper clip under a bright blue summer sky is a happy affair. A Mountie in dress red tunic, asked by a local photographer to climb aboard the clip, cheerfully does so. Only the thought of what would happen if a Los Angeles police officer were asked to do the same could make one smile more.

Later, at a community supper with a cake in the shape of a paper clip, the Dragon From the East finds herself chatting with Mr. MacDonald’s parents. His mother confides that they call the patient and adventurous Ms. Dupuis “Saint Dom.” She also says they were worried about their son.

He had wanted to write, but seemed to think publishers would just come to him. He had another idea before this one, but when he pitched it in New York, the editor wasn’t interested. Then Mr. MacDonald took a red paper clip from his shirt and said he was going to trade it for a house, and the man’s eyes lit up.

What?! Mr. MacDonald was planning a book from the beginning? This is a detail he has left out of his Hero’s Journey, and as soon as possible he is cut from the pack. Questioned, he becomes nervous. He had had another idea before the paper clip, Mr. MacDonald says. One agent was interested but not that interested. They didn’t sign anything. Later he signed with someone else.

“If it hadn’t worked out, I would have done something else,” Mr. MacDonald says. “I wasn’t going to be one of those people who was going to toil for years at a newspaper.”

(Oh! A lance to the dragon’s heart.)

The dragon departs, brooding about the difference between adventure for the sake of adventure and adventure for the sake of a book. But as the sun sets and the red lights in the shape of paper clips come up on Main Street, the distinction seems unimportant. Kyle MacDonald wanted to have fun and live off his ideas, and he did.

While other people his age were mired in the deadly bog of mortgage payments, he had gotten himself a three-bedroom house with two bathrooms without spending a dime. Let the name Red Paper Clip Guy be celebrated wherever he may roam.